Slashdot Mirror
'Headphone Jacks Are the New Floppy Drives' (daringfireball.net)
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple's upcoming iPhone won't have a 3.5mm headphone jack. The news has already upset many people. The Verge's Nilay Patel wrote on Tuesday that the decision of getting rid of the legacy headphone port is "user hostile and stupid." Apple commentator John Gruber makes a case for why Apple's supposed move is not a bad idea at all. He writes:Patel misses the bigger problem. It's not enforcement of DRM on audio playback. It's enforcement of the MFi Program for certifying hardware that uses the Lightning port. Right now any headphone maker in the world can make any headphones they want for the standard jack. Not so with the Lightning port.He adds that the existing analog headphone jack "is more costly in terms of depth than thickness," and by getting rid of it, Apple could use the extra real estate to stuff in more battery juice. Addressing Patel's point that the move of ditching a deeply established standard will "disproportionately impact accessibility," Gruber adds that "enabling, open, and democratizing" have never been high on Apple's list of priorities for external ports. Gruber also addressed Patel's argument that introducing a Lightning Port-enabled headphone feature will make Android and iPhone headphones incompatible. He wrote: Why would Apple care about headphone compatibility with Android? If Apple gave two shits about port compatibility with Android, iPhones would have Micro-USB ports. In 1998 people used floppy drives extensively for sneaker-netting files between Macs and PCs. That didn't stop Apple from dropping it.As for "nobody is asking" Apple to remove headphone jack from the next iPhone, Gruber reminds: This is how it goes. If it weren't for Apple we'd probably still be using computers with VGA and serial ports. The essence of Apple is that they make design decisions "no one asked for".The 3.5mm headphone jack has been around for decades. We can either live with it forever, or try doing something better instead. History suggests that OEMs from across the world quickly replicate Apple's move. Just the idea of Apple removing the headphone jack -- the rumor of which first began last year -- arguably played an instrumental role in some smartphones shipping without the legacy port this year. If this is a change that we really need, Apple is perhaps the best company to set the tone for it. Though, whether we really need to get rid of the headphone jack remains debatable.
Why in tech must we call everything old "legacy" and then assume it should go away? Maybe some thing work well enough that they should always be there. Some things are well designed and don't need to be changed. The 3.5mm port is resilient, rotatable, and universally supported, and only slightly bigger than the latest tech now would be able to replace it with.
Just because it is analogue does not make it irrelevant. Your ears are analogue. Why add another level of technology, another thing to charge, putting a digital-to-analogue converter on every pair of earphones rather than just one in the phone...
I remember having to have an adapter for headphones on the T-Mobile G1 and old Nokia phones, and it sucked then, and it will suck now. And so what if Apple release lightning headphones. Do we think they make the best headphones? They make crap headphones when compared to actual audio companies.
This Apple apologist doesn't even try to make is sound good, just that Apple are going to do it anyway so you might as well get used to it.
All I have been hearing is Apple, Apple, Apple. Yet from Motorola killed the headphone jack and nobody noticed 10 days ago
There are many interesting things about the Moto Z devices presented yesterday, ultra-thin handsets that bring modularity to Motorola’s lineup of mobile products. One of them is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, which absolutely nobody noticed during the event.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I can buy bluetooth headphones, but at a 300% markup, because of Apple's bluetooth lock-in."
ANY Bluetooth headphones will work just fine. Not being an audiophile jerk, I listen to lots of stuff on my iPhone using El Cheapo Bluetooth headsets all the time. A fine trolling though, congrats.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
Non digital cabling is more prone to error and interference,
Not at the sort of power levels and run lengths you're talking about with headphones.
and if you think about it does it not kind of suck you only get TWO possible distinct channels?
Given that (a) it's a headphone jack and (b) I only have two ears... not really.
What if you wanted to provide a headphone with a subwoofer specific channel
Where on earth would a subwoofer go on a pair of headphones?
true surround sound headset
Now that I'd like to see!
Out of the way, Luddite, as the rest of us proceed onward to the future.
ooh goody, a zealot.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You do know that MFi allows for 100 mA draw from the Lightning port, don't you? Most - probably more than 99% - of those Lightning headphones will NOT have batteries, they'll pull power from your phone to run THEIR circuitry to do the D/A and amplification - most of which STILL has to exist inside the iPhone because it still has speakers internally. That's what happens now with the few Lightning-equipped headphones on the market - the iDevice provides power to run everything.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yet another reason not to buy apple products, I don't want to be forced to buy a $40 adapter for my $10-20 earbuds and I DO NOT want to get railroaded onto ANOTHER battery powered accessory for my phone.
First, they'd give you Lightning ear buds in the box. Second, if you want third party headphones, you don't need an adaptor:
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/136466-5-lightning-headphones-to-buy-when-iphone-ditches-the-3-5mm-jack
Personally I think Apple should either "give" Lightning to the IEEE (like FireWire), or switch to using Thunderbolt on iDevices (which allows for USB, display, power, etc.).
The comparison falls flat on so many levels.
First an foremost, the floppy died because it was no longer able to fulfill its role as a data storage medium. Data size simply outgrew its ability to hold it. The older ones here might still remember playing Monkey Island on the Amiga with a ridiculous amount of floppies, constantly swapping despite having two floppy drives.
There was simply a demand for something that could hold more data than the floppy was able to. CDs filled this role, as well as ZIP drives did. There was a demand for such larger media because the floppy was simply getting too small.
I fail to see this development with headphone jacks. Considering that our kids consider YouTube videos good enough to watch their music, I doubt that they are really craving the high quality audio digital audio could deliver.
This looks more like a solution desperately trying to find a problem so it could become relevant. Or, in other words, we'll get another demand from the supply side shoved down our throats.
Could someone explain capitalism to me again? I think I misunderstood a thing or two.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ok, misread, I thought the quoted person was an Apple employee. I hadn't realized that "Apple commentator" was a real profession.
I found the patent again. It turns out you can.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.